Bug - search (hit ranking, page navigation issues, vanishing results) - UM forum

[peetersm 124]

Search from forum page:

-how are results "ranked"? I'm not seeing presents of key words linked to results.

-navigating results pages has strange effects - vanishing results

-also not able to search on usernames

here's a video:

 

I figured with all the long threads about issues, it might be helpful to post this as a "question" so we can see when it is fixed (by changing to solved), ALSO trying to be very narrow in the scope of issues I will post.

[ErikDeBruijn 15]

Thanks for posting this separately. I think the importance of a good search engine cannot be overstated.

From what I gather is that:

 

• some context information is lost when changing page through pagination.
  
• Results aren't being ranked according to relevance.
  

 

Is that correct?

For YouMagine we've developed our own ranked search that weights the title higher than the abstact, higher than the description, etc. Tags are between the title and abstract. We might be able to use a similar technique here (and possibly the same search engine).

Relevance is quite a subjective thing. I guess you would want to factor in several things and place weights on them. E.g.

 

1. Occurence of keywords in title
   
2. keywords in original post
   
3. inverse of the age of the topic
   
4. keywords in replies
   

 

@peetersm (or anyone else for that matter), anything that would still be missing that will determine relevance?

[peetersm 124]

I think relevance should also consider:

5. how close the key words are to each other.

About #3. Inverse age of topic.

Once basic functionality is restored I might prefer to be able to sort search results by age.

Also would like to use basic syntax like minus or "not" to ignore terms-words I don't want.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Guest

[mastory 44]

I am not sure how this could be done, but I often want to search for post of certain keywords by certain users only. I may remember that particular person posted on a certain topic and want to re-visit that info.  For instance, I might like to search what a certain user has had to say about Merlin hot ends.

Maybe this could be a secondary search function. First query is a generic search. With the initial search results, a selection of the most prevalent posters on that topic would be displayed. The searcher could then narrow their search to only one or a group of those posters.

A time range filter may be beneficial.   If searching for feeder information, I may want to disregard anything older than a year.

Maybe the time ranges could be something like: last 7 days, last month, last 3 months, last year, prior to last year, 2 or more years ago...

Matt

Edited May 7, 2015 by Guest

[SandervG 1,521]

I am just thinking out loud, but like your search in gmail? For example the keywords would be: 'from:mastory merlin hot end'

Searching for a certain time frame could be added, but if it is ranged in from first to latest, at some point you could also stop scrolling if the date is visible?

[Labern 774]

This might be overly complected but it would be nice to have an advanced option to select printer model. how this could be implicated could be tricky but it could look at original topic posters profile and what model(s) they have?? or add like a -(model) eg -UM2 similar to a google search to eliminate some results.

I dunno, but the feature would be nice.

[peetersm 124]

if we had tags we could easily add printer model.

I like the idea of an advance search, or better yet... a "refine search" were we could add or subtract keyword syntax to the current results.

[peetersm 124]

OH, and we need "Search this forum" which means if I am in the Art of Printing, then my search will be restricted to just that forum not all forums. But if I choose "Search all forums" or maybe just navigate up then I will get results from all forums.